Messi’s greatness leaves us ambushed again by the never-ending magic of sport

An image that will last forever — Lionel Messi’s epic injury time winner at the Bernabeu was sport at its most magical.

In the early waking hours of Monday morning, with only the distant sound of the day’s first traffic to disturb the thoughts, the magic of the previous evening appeared to hang in the mind and senses, protruding through the silence. It lingered in the eyes and ears, its sound and rhythm ringing in the brain like the post-nightclub tinnitus on a dawn walk home.

In the vacuum, Lionel Messi seemed frozen in time, holding his shirt up to the silenced Real Madrid fans in the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu after his glorious last-minute winner in the final El Clásico of the 2016/17 La Liga season. Defiantly forcing them to acknowledge his name, that the moment, the match, the night, was irretrievably his. Bruised, bloodied, kicked, fouled and jeered for ninety minutes, yet emerging as king.

Unless one is a Madridista, the satisfaction borne out by the narrative of the game was complete and fulfilling: a Barca in decline, seeming ready to claim a brave win against their superior rivals — to make one last stand, perhaps — only for Madrid to flex their muscles and regain their foothold on Catalan throats. Until, that is, Messi — having barely survived a brutal tackle from Sergio Ramos — delivered the final, dramatic and shocking plot twist. The silence that enveloped the stadium immediately after the goal — punctuated by the far-off roars of the Barcelona fans — was as much an acknowledgement of Messi’s greatness as it was of the late nature of his goal. It signified the realisation that only a few players in the history of the game could have the capacity to seize such a huge occasion in the manner Messi did; could have the world’s eyes on them, expecting greatness, and yet still cause awe.

Tuning in to a game like the one on Sunday night — as with most sports events — always represents a gamble of sorts with our time. In an age where guaranteed amusement and entertainment is at our fingertips (think Netflix), sport still represents an uncontrollable lottery as to whether we will be bored silly or entertained royally. Yet it is always worth taking the chance, for every so often we will be gifted an experience like Sunday, when even from the distant confines of an Irish couch we are reduced to stammering wonder at the exploits of a tiny wizard from Argentina.

In the aftermath of such occasions — in the pub after the game, sharing in the joyous wonder of such miracles with fellow witnesses, or in the next morning’s early light, when the memory of it all floods into your bleary consciousness — it would seem appropriate if there was never another football match ever again, if all that ever remained of the game was that image of Lionel Messi, standing victorious in front of the Madrid fans. How can we be expected to watch football — sport — again? How can we possibly allow ourselves to be exposed to anything less than the majesty of what we have just seen, to risk experiencing something other than this thrill, to chance tarnishing this glorious and lasting image of the beautiful game? How can we even play the game again, knowing how inadequate our own efforts are, knowing how our actions — anyone’s actions — can never possibly match this moment?

But we find a way. Life goes on. We get up and go to work and by midweek the match is largely forgotten, irrelevant to the struggles and happenings of our own lives. The sporting world moves on, too. Real Madrid may well win La Liga this year, and as the Madrid faithful celebrate they will think little of what happened in their stadium on April 23rd.

We never learn. We allow ourselves to forget what it feels like, let ourselves move on from that wonder we experience when sport takes us and transports us to another plane. And whether it is Usain Bolt’s 100 metres performance in Beijing, the Dublin v Kerry All-Ireland final in 2011 or Messi at the Bernabéu in 2017, sport always gets us again.

Creeping up behind us, ready to pounce and send us into exquisite, bewildered ecstasy.